Today is Australia Day here in the lucky land down under. It’s a public holiday so we didn’t have to go to work. Instead of being able to participate in any of the events planned out for the occasion, we were driving around Melbourne picking up stuff we’ve won from eBay.

To mark this occassion though, I’ve made a little recording of Australia’s favourite folk song Waltzing Matilda. No, I didn’t sing it. Instead, I made a little arrangement of the song that I could play easily enough on my Yamaha 302B plastic alto recorder (a flute-like musical instrument if you didn’t know by now). Now, let me warn you that I’m still an amateur recorder player so please don’t expect too much out of the performance.

But at least, if you are not familiar with the song, you’ll at last hear how it plays. By the way, I’ve first heard of this tune as an ad jingle when I was back in the Philippines on a TV commercial by Sunraysia which was a fruit drink brand imported from Australia.

When I migrated to Australia and I heard this tune sung by Aussies, I thought they were singing the Sunraysia jingle. Of course I know better now.

Hey, that’s great that you play recorder! I started on the Soprano about a year ago, and just today got an Alto! The same one you did, exactly! It’s great! Now I just need to get a practice book, or find free lessons online 🙂 But, from what I’ve read, the fingering is the same as a Soprano, just the notes are different on the staff 🙂 …of course I could have it all wrong since I just got it today.

I do like the deeper tone, and rich sound! I hope to get a Tenor someday too… 🙂

Hi Blackdove. Well, at the beginning, pumipiyok din ako especially in the two lowest notes. I couldn’t make those darned notes to sound right for a week. But after a lot of practice and research, I finally figured out the right amount of blowing to make the note play correctly.

And yeah, I remember those recorder stalls in malls back in the Philippines. Man. I wish I got into this that early so I could’ve bought a lot of cheap music sheets from there.

Anyway, I am planning on doing some backing track thing but I couldn’t record anything from modern music as it would be a violation of copyright. I want to play older songs so that I could post them on the blog, too. What I’ll do is record one track, then another and another, then mix them to make it sound like there’s more than one person playing. It’s a bit ambitious at the moment though given my low level of skill with the recorder. But in time, I hope to accomplish this.

But in my spare time, I can probably play some karaoke songs and play the recorder in tune with it. I can play by ear by just a little bit. 🙂

The way you played the recorder wasn’t bad at all. I thought all the notes came out fine. I tried once my sister’s plastic recorder, a Honner (German brand, I think). She was good at it. But I was terrible. Most of the notes were like muffled squeaks. “Pumipiyok” is my the description of my playing. Never held one again. I think you really have to have correct finger placements and technique to get the notes right.

Speaking of recorders, you could try playing “backing tracks” to enliven your pieces. Have you seen recorders being sold at the malls several years back? The player/saleslady would have background music on cassettes playing and she plays the melody on the recorder. It’s C-O-O-L!

Basically the background music sounds like a minus one – so the recorder playing the melody fits in nicely as the “voice”. Pinoys are fond of singing so you’ll never have enough of videoke CD’s with the old and latest tunes at the local malls. Corz you have to figure out the melody notes first.